York and New York in early September

This won’t necessarily be the most exhausting series of lectures I’ve ever given (that may have been early February 2008 in the U.K.). But early September is looking to be of a similar magnitude.

My keynote at SEP is in York on September 2. The Conference Programme can be found HERE. The title of my talk there is “Our Aristotelian Future.”

Following an insane itinerary that British Airways probably will not let me change, I fly back to Egypt for about 9 hours before retracing my steps and flying straight back through London to New York, again on British Airways.

In New York, I’ll be doing the following.

*September 8, 2011, at THE PUBLIC SCHOOL NEW YORK, which by then will probably be hosting its events in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. The title of that talk is “New Paths From Husserl and Heidegger,” concerning my recent worry that the post-Derridean climate in continental philosophy has simply left the phenomenology/Heidegger line behind via a series of facile slogans rather than fully assimilating, digesting, and moving beyond it. I’ll be focusing on the positive side of the theme, however: what the philosophy avant garde still can learn from phenomenology.

*September 9, 2011. “What Causes Space?” This title is at the request of the NYU graduate students who invited me. I don’t know the answer to this question at the moment, but will have some thoughts on the topic prepared by September 9.

*September 14, 2011. The New School, New York. Ian Bogost will unfortunately be far away from New York on that date, but Levi Bryant and Tim Morton will be there, along with (rumor has it) Steven Shaviro, and some other great names I’m not in a position to confirm just yet. I’ll be speaking there on “The Four Most Typical Objections to OOO,” along the same lines as my recent blog post on that theme.

*September 15, 2011. “Speculative Realism: A Conversation with Jane Bennett, Levi Bryant, and Graham Harman.” CUNY Graduate Center, New York. I’ll be delighted to be in conversation with Jane and Levi simultaneously, and I’m glad those two will finally have the chance to meet (I already had the opportunity to meet and speak with Jane at the Oxford event in early May).

*September 16, 2011. “Aristotle with a Twist.” SPECULATIVE MEDIEVALISMS II conference (thanks to the hard work of Eileen Joy and others). CUNY Graduate Center, New York. This talk will extend and amplify my September 2 keynote at SEP in York. I’m deeply opposed to the unstated working assumption in the continental philosophy of our times that Aristotle represents all that is dry, middle-aged, scholastic, tedious, commonsensical, and obsolete. There are times for every important philosopher to exert influence and then times for them to remain silent (perhaps for centuries at a time). I think there are many untapped resources in Aristotle that speak to us directly right now, and I’m also surprised that most people continue to overlook the sheer bizarreness of his sense of humor and of his philosophical work as a whole. Aristotle is weird. Weird realism needs Aristotle.

This will also be the longest extended period of time I have ever spent in New York. And by God, I deserve it!